General News

When Mark Fernandes visited us a couple years ago, and led discussions first with our leadership team, and later the division at convocation, he challenged each of us to look at ourselves as leaders and to consider the proposition that we find direction through our values. There was something overwhelmingly refreshing about his story, specifically about how Luck Stone’s compass is not focused on “making rocks” as our own Pete Gretz likes to say, but had a mission that went beyond the bottom line of their business. “Igniting human potential” is their mission and their battle cry. They could be in the education business, perhaps they could make healing drugs, or even great software. But their business is rock. And yet to grow that business and to distinguish it from others, they put a focus on human potential. Refreshing for sure.

In all of these roles I have stayed committed to values-based leadership. No matter what title I’ve had, whether corporate executive, professor, executive partner or board member–or for that matter soccer coach, volunteer parent or Sunday school teacher–I’ve never lost sight of who I am and what matters most to me. By knowing myself and my values, being committed to balance and having true self-confidence and genuine humility, I can far more easily make decisions, no matter if I’m facing a crisis or an opportunity. The answer is always simply to do the right thing and the very best that I can.

Knowing your values can help you do the right thing and also focus your effort on being the best that you can be. And its worth saying here, for those reading, that values-based leadership works in two ways. First, you have to know yourself and your own values. Your values are what make you, you. Its from these that you will act on a daily basis, and when they’re known and focused on positive traits, there’s the potential for great things.

Second, there are the values that define an organization. The values are what you find, but hopefully those are the same values that you see members of an organization attempting to champion. Excellence, creativity, courage, honor, and optimism are hopefully not just words you see on our walls, but the feeling, evidence, and artifacts left behind from interactions with teachers, students, custodians, and bus drivers. In fact, the entire organization might so focused that it’s easy to see these values all around us.

Getting that focus can be difficult. It takes time and effort. But how do we start?

Next, let’s focus on your own set of values. The personal set. For me, one of the ones that feels strongest to who I am is creativity. It drives how I work and the way I make decisions. If it’s who I am, then I need to make sure I am not compromising these value. I might take a week to reflect on how creativity has played a positive role in my work and relationships. Then I might look back on ways I could have been more purposefully engaged with the traits that reveal this value.

Next, we might sit with a small group of colleagues, or even students, and even parents. Where do we see ECCHO? How do these values align with our mission of maximizing the potential of learners? When we look at the full strategic plan, what goals might we set for ourselves in the next month that would help contribute to others seeing excellence, creativity, courage, honor, and optimism all around them, when they interact with us, when they visit our classrooms, or attend one of our meetings?

I believe values stick to us based on our experiences and that has a lot to do with our outlook on life. Likely one of the most sure-fire ways to inspire another person is to let them experience us living through the values that resonate with us. You might be reading this, and asking “Who has the time? I’ve got a job to do!” At the end of the day, our job is inspiring and preparing the next generation. The details matter. It’s about preparing students (and one another) to make a positive impact.

GHS Senior Phillip Goodman wants to help the instrumental music program here in Goochland. He’s established an instrument drive, and is looking for donated musical instruments (in working or not quite working order) to be used in our schools. On May 12, from 3:30-9:00PM, he’ll be manning the band room door at the GHS cafeteria to collect what you might have to donate. They’re looking for oboes, flutes, clarients, bass clarinets, saxophones, french honrs, trumpets, trombones, tubas, percussion, guitars, and more. If you have questions, you can reach Phillip by email (pgoodman93 at yahoo.com).

By giving your old instrument you are giving a great opportunity to someone else who otherwise could never learn. Please join us in this project to bring music education to everyone in Goochland County who is unable to without the help of our community.

In high school and into college, a friend of mine piqued my interest in a sci-fi television series called Star Trek: the Next Generation, and like the original series, the characters living aboard the Enterprise used small, hand-held computers called tricorders.According to the Wikipedia, this device was focused on sensing, computing, and recording things.

More recently, I visited Mrs. Kass’ classroom at GMS and students were learning about the quilt designs used during the time of the Underground Railroad to communicate. A whole collection of designs were used, and some can be seen here. While originally unplanned, students were using their iPads to “record” these patterns as they came up on the projection via the Promethean board. Designs would be used later in an upcoming project.

Having the tool in hand, students could immediately utilize the camera to record these images. Earlier in the week, Mrs. Kass’ students from her science class were doing something similar, recording images of their environment. Students collected a number of fascinating things from around the school, in areas just beyond the tennis courts. Mrs. Leiderman led the expedition, and later shared with students her own foraging artifacts in the form of bugs and flowers that have gone to form the virtual pages of several ebooks.

This is interesting. A small, hand-held device can be used, almost just like in StarTrek, to sense, compute, and record things. These examples have been light on sensing (and perhaps, fitness trackers or the new Apple Watch might be better examples of how we will use technology to sense things), and the computing part happens too, but more often later in the classroom as students re-mix the recorded photographs in a way that helps them better understand what was captured.

I recently learned that some teachers were exploring research that articulated what can go wrong with an iPad deployment, as published in a research article about a school iPad deployment in another state. For anyone who might point out what could go wrong with behavior, perhaps even amplified bad behavior with a powerful sensor, computer, and recorder, the potential for deeper learning using such a device will likely always outweigh the negatives. I don’t really care so much that the iPads I see in our classrooms remind me of the future foretold in StarTrek, but sometimes you have to marvel at how that vision from just a few years ago has the potential to change the ways in which we get to learn and grow.

Tonight after school I led the final technology workshop of the year, on podcasting. One of the questions I posed was what it takes for students to remember something well. One response was “a personal experience.”

Many years ago, we convened on a professional development day at the Cub Scout camp in Goochland (thanks to Karren Streagle) and we all worked on a marketing project together for promoting popcorn. The session, entitled “Learning Hacks,” based in part on the book by John Medina entitled Brain Rules, focused on a project-based approach that started with an entry event of smelling and tasting popcorn.

What was cool about re-discovering these photos this evening on my home computer was the “look” of engagement when teachers were poised to learn, working in teams. It brought back some good memories, and reinforced for me the wisdom from today about providing memorable experiences for our students.

I am preparing to move soon, and am going through a lot of cruft that I’ve held onto for a number of years. I’m reading a book, actually, on how to let go of some of this stuff, and not surprising to some who know me, I’m taking the time to “digitize” some of the stuff I can’t stand to part with. This is such an example.

In 1986, I attended Ingomar Middle School in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. I have to say, of all the years of going to school, this was the best for me. I know it was a combination of caring, awesome teachers, but also knowing a number of kids who I could relate with. I did well in the 6th grade and I hated to leave the next year when my family moved to the Cleveland, OH, area.

The object which I scanned above is a coaster of some sort. We had to take a home economics class, and we learned how to cross-stitch. This was something I created and I have not been able to throw it away since middle school. In part, I have positive feelings about this school, as I have shared. But if it were, say, a concert program, or a report card, I’d look at it, then toss it. But this is different. This was something I put my mind to, my hands to, this is something I made. The object is homemade.

My sentimentality aside, I think it’s worth noting for the sake of this blog post the importance we place on objects we create. There’s a mental distinction I think between a worksheet we fill out, and something bigger, say, like this coaster. The apron I made later in the 7th grade in Ohio wasn’t as good as this in terms of craftsmanship (although, I am sad to admit, I too still own). But this was something I look back on as an object representing some personal success. I learned a new skill, I tried my hand at it, and wow, it had utility beyond, well, a worksheet.

I am not sure what the magic is between an object like this, and say, the worksheet. But in this case, if it was the color, the yarn, the texture, and the perceived utility behind it, it mattered to me. I wonder what my teacher, Mrs. Conrad, would think of me keeping this for so long. What did she intend for her students to do with these, when, say, they’d go to high school? College? Toss them away, no doubt.

I think it may be time to say goodbye to this part of my past, but not before I find value in keeping it so long. As educators, I think we have a duty to give students the opportunity to create things that resonate with them and mean something, well, personal. It won’t always be a physical object, but those are easiest to persist the age of time. It illustrates for me, again, the nuance between personalized and individualized learning. Facts are remembered and forgotten, unused. Emotions remain with us forever, even if it requires holding or touching something from our past.

More recently, I’ve heard the term “balance” come up in education circles, and sometimes it rubs me the wrong way. Some balance, I’d argue, is good; other balance could be dangerous.

Balance with Screentime

I took part in a conversation recently with some teachers and one offered this sentiment: “Learning through a screen all the time isn’t what’s best for kids; sometimes they need to learn in a different way, maybe, by building something with their hands.” I found the idea easy to agree with, and even though my work is often tied to learning through screens, I think we learn through experience, not through glass. Balance in this regard is apt, when it comes to any one thing we do directed at learning. Learning should mimic the full range of human capacity for experiencing our world.

Balance with Assessment

A number of folks recently visited us here in Goochland to learn more about our Balanced Assessment Project. This effort, organized originally by Dr. Geyer in 2013, set out to re-engineer how we conduct and do assessment within Goochland. In short, we now use a variety of assessment types to provide a more holistic view of student progress with learning. Balance in this regard reminds me of a balanced plan for more healthy living. A doctor wouldn’t likely recommend heavy, strenuous exercise alone, while we could eat all the junk food we might find. We also might not fully benefit from a super-healthy diet when our activity level is low. Balance in this regard is a healthy diet, moderate, regular exercise, and balancing our day to day activities to include things that help us reduce stress and find happiness.

Balance with Instruction

I actually do not have one specific example here, but this is will illustrate the more dangerous interpretation of balance we might make. I am sure there is a name for what I’m trying to describe. It’s when you take a general concept and apply it to something else, but the comparison isn’t entirely congruent. The example I have is with coding, which is the contemporary term for computer programming. (It also extends to things that are technically not programming, like HTML creation for webpages, but to most folks, the interpretation is the same.) We are currently offering two after school coding clubs at Goochland and Randolph, led by Ms. Parrish. She took this on completely on her own, and I know eventually, she’d like to have the experience available to all three elementary schools. I think what she has done is a dream come true and give her 100% of the credit for the success of these programs. Students come to these weekly sessions excited and energized and the types of learning taking place is deep.

The idea behind a liberal education, which is more apt a description of many undergraduate programs today, centered on having a well-rounded (balanced) exposure to a number of different disciplines of learning. That same idea is certainly echoed in our state standards. We don’t just teach math to kids who seem to like it. We teach it to all of them.

We do sometimes marginalize some subjects/disciplines. Band or chorus. Or, music or art. We do let kids choose with some things in middle and high school, but the “core” is always there.

The one thing that has stayed with my training years ago as a future music teacher was that music, and really all the arts, belonged to humankind, not just kids who seemed to like music, or show an aptitude. I could say the same thing about coding. Coding as an educational method helps the learner develop skills around how to think in logical ways. I’m so happy there’s an opportunity for some kids to develop coding skills through an extra-curricular club (and for parents who are interested, I can point them to a number of excellent online opportunities for learning, too, that are free). But balance in this regard is dangerous.

The same goes for a “balance” between student-centered and teacher-centered instruction. So many of us were taught how to teach (or it was modeled for us as students ourselves) on how to present and rehearse information to/for students. When the sole source of information is the teacher, we are robbing kids of the opportunity to be self-directed learners and human beings. I think if we’re being honest, we are currently balanced in our schools here in the United States. As general practice, we mix up (balance) our instructional delivery methods with different instructional design models. But it’s the student-centered ones that we ought to be considering. The wholesomeness of balance is apt, but not when it’s between spoon-feeding and inquiry.

I want to be honest – I rely upon a lot of teacher-centered methods in my own teaching. But I’ve been getting better. I love to lecture, I love to present ideas. I’ve seen teachers who are so talented at it, too. It’s not that kids cannot learn this way, they can. We all can. But if our vision is focused on something we’re calling deeper learning, with incredible focus on learning from students (which we’re calling engagement), and we’re learning how to better collect and utilize assessment, we need to be careful about the promise of a simple word like “balance.”

Balance Should Require Us to be Reflective

If you’ve made it this far, it’s probably obvious I’m reflective of my own role in the field of education. One way we can really use the term “balance” without it failing us is to make it personal. We’re hopefully not balancing one really good strategy for learning with a bad one, instead, we’re taking the time to stake stock of our tools, our abilities, and our effectiveness and how we are able to balance those. For example, I might love to lecture, but realize it’s not the best way for students to learn. So, I might balance by using my own experience as an entry event to a project where I turn over the learning to students. Or, a “bell-ringer” for an interactive debate in class. Or I balance my assessment strategy by giving students the ability to self-assess their learning on an upcoming assignment. The reality is, learning and teaching is a mixture of both art and science and with extreme limits on resources (among them, time), we are always attempting to balance the experiences we provide students. My ultimate point is to consider what we’re balancing, not to be satisfied alone with the idea that balance is, in itself, a virtue.

It wasn’t that long ago that I saw Mr. Goldman back at GHS, working as a substitute teacher. Terry Goldman was a fixture by the time I had come to Goochland High School in 1999. Formerly the library media specialist, when I met Terry, he was a social studies teacher who had high expectations for kids, for using high quality books in class, and finding something interesting to take away from history. Goldman was also a coach, and until recently, lived in the county. At last mention, I knew he had moved to South Carolina with his wife.

Terry Goldman passed away on February 23, 2015.

The memorial service will be on Friday, February 27, 2015, at 12:00 PM at the Temple Or Ami, 9400 Huguenot Road in Richmond, VA 23235, (804) 272-0017. A burial will follow at Greenwood Cemetery.

Mr. Goldman had a number of varied interests and he and I shared time talking about history, music, and even how to improve our schools a few times. Somehow, if you spent any time with him, you walked away a little richer. You might not have always agreed with Terry, but you were better off for the conversation.

Before we really got into G21, Terry was into project experiences for students. One year he was so excited that two students had built a trebuchet. He asked me to come talk to the students and photograph their work.

Goochland County is located in central Virginia. We’re a small school district with a strong history with technology integration. Teachers have been issued Apple laptops since 2001, when all of our schools went wireless. In 2005 we started the Blogging Initiative, which required of each teacher to maintain a blog for increasing communications between individual classrooms and our community. In 2008, we launched the G21™ Project-based Framework and teachers started with PBL in classrooms, tied to a focus of developing twenty-first century skills. In 2013, we launched a 1:1 pilot with iPads in grades 3-5 at Goochland Elementary School. In 2014, our superintendent James Lane became a Connected Superintendent. In 2014, too, we started using Schoology as a LMS in grades 3-12.

This school year we have expanded our 1:1 project to grades 5-6 district-wide. For SY 2015-16, the program will continue to expand to grades 4-7.

Our foundation and future plans for being future ready are directly tied to our strategic plan.

Our Virginia DOE has once again partnered with the Virginia Society of Technology in Education to sponsor a Digital Learning Day on March 13.

Several activities will be held on March 13 to highlight and celebrate participants across the nation. The VSTE will be doing a Digital Learning Day “kickoff event” on Thursday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m. The kickoff event will feature a webinar highlighting the VSTE 2014 award winners: Outstanding Leader: Janet Copenhaver, Henry County; Outstanding Teacher: Daniel Nemerow, Prince William County; and Innovative Educator of the Year: Teresa Coffman, University of Mary Washington. To view the webinar on Digital Learning Day, go to http://www.vste.org/index/learn/webinar. Schools, libraries, community programs, and classrooms are invited to showcase how they are using digital media to improve teaching and learning.

For me, and I know I’m not alone, every day is a digital learning day in Goochland. But there is plenty to learn and pick up from others, and if that’s a reason that resonates with you, I invite you to participate in the March 12 webinar and to explore what others are doing to celebrate technology in our schools this spring.

I’m always fascinated to learn more about how science, like cognitive science, supports or refutes hunches and practices about learning and teaching. It’s always refreshing to know that a successful instructional practice can be supported through research in neuroscience.

This story reinforced for us that despite the size of our high school students, their brain development and capability are different than what we see in adults. They have some advantages and disadvantages. Especially interesting was the part about new ways of educating medical students to be self-learners, which supports my preference for supporting inquiry in the classroom.

About this blog…

This is the blog of John Hendron, Ed.D., director of innovation & strategy for Goochland County Public Schools. Through this blog I share information for teachers, administrators and families dealing with learning and teaching with technology.